INDIA. Chamoli, Uttarakhand: It’s been over a week since the Uttarakhand disaster which resulted in a massive flash flood in the Chamoli district after a glacier broke off in the Nanda Devi sanctuary. While human efforts are going on to save precious human lives rapped inside the tunnel, friends and family members of those trapped inside, and the man’s best friend – a dog, a Bhutia dog waits patiently outside the tunnel hoping for the good news.
It indeed was a major disaster and rescue workers have managed to recover around 38 bodies and are still searching for over 200 others who still remain missing. Rescue operations are also digging and drilling nonstop, 24 hours a day at the Tapovan tunnel of the NTPC project where a group of about 25-35 workers are still trapped inside.
Hundreds of men are deployed for search and rescue operations at the tunnel at Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel power plant for over seven days now.
It also is a long wait for a two-year-old Bhutia breed dog named Blackie who has stationed himself outside the tunnel; for past five days now he is sitting there, awaiting the return of his friends.
Blackie was supposedly born near the area and was loved and fed by the workers in the tunnel. It was a daily ritual, he used to come in the morning, laze around close to the project site, and lovingly play with the workers and go back downhill in the evening when the workers used to return home.
On the day of disaster too, as per his daily routine, he came but didn’t find any of his favourite workers around as the flood had already hit. A dog has great instincts and he must have instantly realised that something was amiss. He must have felt strange seeing the place was full of strangers.
The rescue workers tried to shoo him away but he chose to stay and his anxious eyes kept searching for his friends and he keeps making repealed visits and look for the workers who used to feed him.
He is now a big hit with the local onlookers who now lovingly feed him when he comes in to check. Blackie has become a great example of the fact that a dog is a human’s best friend as he will stand with him or her through thick and thin always.
The dog is often seen sitting outside the tunnel waiting for the men he knew and praying mutely along with hundreds of locals to see his friends live again soon.
